Monday, March 25, 2013

Maybe you saw the news articles this week: tomorrow, President Obama is going to declare 5 locations as new national monuments.

A lot of these places are vast tracts of land, and their primary interest is the natural beauty and wildlife. So it seems like they ought to be national parks rather than national monuments. But only Congress can designate National Parks. The President can only designate National Monuments.

Lots of the news articles about this list the new monuments, but they don't say much about them. So let's find out some more details.

First State National Monument - Delaware & Pennyslvania

A portion of the Woodlawn property, all of which will become the First State National Monument (Photo by Jim Graham, from the Conservation Fund)

The lands in this new national park are mainly in Delaware, whose motto is the "first state." Hence the name of the monument.

The park encompasses 1,100 acres called "the Woodlawn property" in the Brandywine River Valley, extending north into Pennsylvania.

It includes a wildlife preserve, plus trails for hiking, walking, and horseback riding. Farms that were in operation hundreds of years ago have been preserved, and some open fields are leased to local farmers.

This is some seriously old property, "originally acquired by William Penn from the Duke of York in 1692."

One of the things in this 1,100 acres is a place called New Castle Green. This is one of those open green spaces that people used to establish in the middle of towns, as sort of a central park, where you could graze your livestock, go hang out under the trees, or take someone to court (!). It was around the green that basic village services would be located.

This American Elm is the only remaining elm on the New Castle Green. They don't say how old it is, but it lived through the ravages of Dutch Elm Disease, which struck in the 1930s.(Photo from New Castle Green)

New Castle was actually the capital of Delaware until 1777.

While Delaware was the first state in the union, it's the last to have a national monument. Congratulations, Delaware!

Rio Grande del Norte National Monument - New Mexico

Located in New Mexico just south of the border with Colorado, these 240,000 acres run along the northern branch of the Rio Grande.

Within these acres is the 10,093-ft Ute Mountain, which is an inactive shield volcano.

The Rio Grande, meanwhile, has carved a gorge into the landscape some 200 feet deep. This gorge is seriously old -- somewhere between 1.5 and 5 million years old.

Peoples have lived in this area for at least 11,000 years. Among the cultures that have been identified here are Paleoindian, Anasazi, Historic Pueblo, Ute, Navajo, Apache, Comanche, Kiowa, and other Plains groups.

This river was already designated as one of the original 8 rivers named as a Wild and Scenic River in 1968. So people have been looking after this property in a preservation sense for quite a while.

The Gorge has been a fairly popular spot for hiking, climbing, fishing, star-gazing, and more. Pronghorn, deer, and elk calve and forage in this area, so hunting is also popular here.

One part of the river called the Razorblades is considered one of the most challenging kayak runs in New Mexico. Another section called The Box, and 18-mile stretch of water between 900-foot cliffs, is a favorite among white-water rafters.

The Rio Grande is also an important stop for birds on the Migratory Flyway. Eagles, falcons, and hawks nest along the gorge. Ospreys, hummingbirds, herons, avocets, and merlins pass through here. Sandhill cranes stop here in October.

This monument encompasses about 1,000 acres that spread across dozens of small islands and reefs off the coast of Washington, in the Bellingham Bay.

The San Juan Islands are very popular destinations for tourists. As
tourist activity has gone up, private developers have expressed interest
in purchasing some areas, and some of these areas have also been
affected by heavy tourist activity. Designating these area as a national
monument will give the islands the ability to protect their resources
from unwanted development or undesirable degradation.

Visitors can take whale-watching boat tours to sea pods of orcas, sea lions, seals, and humpback, gray, and minke whales.

One resident says Turn Point is where his family had their "best-ever orca sighting" when a huge pod of orcas swam into the kelp within 10 feet of shore. There were enough of them, and they took enough time to eat, it was 45 minutes before the pod swam on out of sight.

The Islands are also a popular spot for kayakers and scuba divers (Jacques Cousteau said this was his second-favorite place to live). Bird watchers can see cormorants, eagles, Trumpeter swans, Hutton's Vireos, Pacific-slope Flycatchers, Rufous Hummingbirds, plus all sorts of sea birds.

Many species native to this area are threatened or near-threatened. Some trees on Iceberg Point and at Point Colville are estimated to be 500 and 600 years old.

The Turn Point Lighthouse has been restored and preserved, as has the Patos Light. Reads Bay Island is home to a kelp mill. Stuart's Island has a one-room schoolhouse with 2 students.

Boating, whale-watching, and even just sunset-watching are popular activities in the San Juan Islands(Photo from Vacation Doorways)

Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument - Ohio

(Photo pinned and re-pinned so many times, I don't know the original source)

Col. Charles Young, born to former slaves, was the third African American to graduate from West Point, and the first to be promoted to colonel.

He led African American Army troops on a variety of assignments in the late 1800s and early 1900s in Nebraska, Utah, San Francisco. He and his troops also served as rangers in Sequoia National Park in California.

Since African-American troops were primarily sent to serve in the Plains and the West, they were often called "Buffalo Soldiers."

He also served internationally, in the Philippines, Haiti, Liberia, and Mexico.

After serving with distinction in the US Army, he became a professor of military science, French, and mathematics at Wilberforce University in Ohio.

He also directed the college band and composed and played music for the piano, violin, and guitar.

He and W.E.B. DuBois were co-faculty members and close friends.

His home in Wilberforce was maintained by his fraternity, Omega Psi Phi, and they have donated the site to be named as a monument in his honor.

Harriet Tubman and Underground Railroad National Monument - Maryland & New York

Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery and returned to the south to lead more than 70 slaves north to freedom through the network of safe houses known as the Underground Railroad.

This monument commemorating her life has yet to be built. The Conservation Fund, based in Arlington, MD, donated lands surrounding her birthplace in Dorchester County, MD to the National Park Service to be used for this purpose.

The monument, in honor of the 100th anniversary of Tubman's death in March 2013, is to commemorate her early life and her work on the Underground Railroad.

The park where the monument will be built includes Stewart’s Canal, dug by hand by slaves and free laborers between 1810 and the 1830s and where Tubman learned important
outdoor skills when she worked in the nearby timbering operations with
her father.

Also included will be the home site of Jacob Jackson, a free African American who used coded letters to help Tubman communicate with her family and others in her work.

The monument is expected to be complete in 2015.

Plans also call for a second monument to be built in Auburn, NY, where she settled in her later years and became active in women's rights and in support of elderly former slaves.

Stewart's Canal in Dorchester County will be part of the lands that will house the Harriet Tubman National Monument. This canal was dug by hand by slaves and laborers.(Photo from America's Byways)

Nearby Blackwater Wildlife Refuge is a favorite spot for bird-watchers.(Photo by David Trozzo, from the Washingtonian)

These all seem to me to be pretty good places to preserve and commemorate. I'm glad they'll be a lasting part of our country's landscape.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

This week I went to a botanical garden in my neighborhood, and they were having a display of orchids. I've never cared much about orchids one way or another, but seeing so many of them arranged so beautifully, I was awed. That many orchids all in one place also made the greenhouses smell beautiful.

So I thought I'd share with you some photos I took of these lovely flowers. I wish I could share their fragrance with you too. I can't do that, but I will of course sprinkle in some facts along with the photos.

One variety of Phalaenopsis (moth orchid). These are most often for sale in grocery and big box stores, and they're said to be one of the easiest orchids to grow.(Photo by the Apple Lady)

Orchids are among the oldest living plants in the world.

They are at least as old as the dinosaurs (Mesozoic era, or 251 million years ago), but recent research suggests they may be even older than that.

Orchids are one of the largest and most diverse family of plants: Orchidaceae. Some 925 genera are classified as belonging to the orchid family. These 925 genera include 27,135 individual species. (Actually, they've identified 69,900 species names, but a lot of those are synonyms.)

They are native to nearly every climate on earth, except for very dry deserts and in Antarctica.

Because of the incredible array of plants that are classified as "orchids," generalizing about them is pretty difficult.

Cymbidium, maybe?(Photo by the Apple Lady)

Even sorting out the name of an orchid can be difficult.
Within specific species, orchid-lovers have created tons of hybrids.
Each of those hybrids are given names, and if the hybrid has won an
award, the acronym for the society that awarded the prize is tacked on.

For example, you might see an orchid called Paph. Olivia "Lorelei," HCC/AOS. That means it belongs to the genera Pahiopedilum (abbreviated Paph.),
and it was a hybrid named after its mixer, Olivia. Since
the cross was first grown, some exceptional cultivars have been noted,
and those were given the name "Lorelei," and they were awarded the
Highly Commended Certificate (HCC) by the American Orchid Society (AOS). Put it all together, and you get Paph. Olivia "Lorelei," HCC/AOS. Rolls right off the tongue.

Since
very few of the orchids that I saw had name plates nearby, I can't be sure of the names of most of the orchids in my photos. I'll try to make a guess about the genera, but that's the best I can do.

If you recognize any of these orchids and know their full names, please let me know in the comments.

Miltoniopsis, I think. My sources say this genera used to be much more popular than they are now.(Photo by the Apple Lady)

Orchids range in size from the smallest--Platyestele stenostachaya, which can fit on a dime, on the nose of President Roosevelt pictured there -- to the largest, Cattleya gigas, whose flowers can grow to be as large as 11 inches across.

The Aztecs first cultivated the seed pods of the vanilla plant for flavoring.

Vanilla remains the only type of orchid cultivated for a commercial crop. It is the most labor-intensive crop in the world.

Another Miltoniopsis, I'm guessing. They look like they have faces like Chinese dragons. Or like how pansies seem to have faces.(Photo by the Apple Lady)

Orchids reproduce using a vast variety of methods that depend on their environment. Speaking as generally as possible, though, their pollen is not like the easily-distributable dusty granules that other flowers have.

Many types of orchids have a little packet or pouch filled with pollen, and they depend on an insect or sometimes even mice or other animals to pick up the pouch and carry it with them.

One Chinese orchid grows flowers that are particularly attractive to mice. When a mouse comes to nibble on the petals, it picks up the pollen pouch and takes it off to the next plant.

Some orchids reek like rotting meat, which attracts maggots, and they carry away the pollen.

Slipper orchids have a cup-like protrusion which invites insects in. Little hairs discourage the insect from backing out the way it came in but instead going forward into the flower where it comes in contact with the pouch and then carries it off with them.

Another type of orchid fires its ball of pollen at bees as they pass by.

Those pollen packets pack a punch -- one pouch can contain as many as 3 million very tiny seeds.

This is one of the more bizarre kinds of orchids that I saw. The plant is that froth of greenish-white skinny leaves at the left, and its blossom is sprouting on that great long stem, though the flower has not yet bloomed. It's sort of glued to that cable that's running vertically at the left, and it looks like it's pretty much subsisting on the air. These are Tillandsias.(Photo by the Apple Lady)

Even after they go through all that effort to pollinate, often their seeds don't germinate. This is because most need their tiny seeds to interact with very specific types of fungus in order for the seed to sprout. It's not often that that combination happens just right.

Perhaps because pollination and germination are such a tricky businesses, orchids have also developed the ability for survive for many years without reproducing.

Many orchids won't even flower for the first 5 to 7 years after germination.

I think it's safe to say that orchids know how to be patient. They've been on this planet long enough, they seem to be pretty good at it.

More Cymbidium, I think.(Photo by the Apple Lady)

Botanist William Cattley received a package from Rio de Janeiro, and in it were orchids used as packing material. Cattley kept one and nurtured it and when it eventually bloomed, he named it the Cattleya. That was in 1818.

Within a few decades, orchid mania had swept through Europe. People were going off to the tropics and scooping up orchids left and right for their growing pleasure back home. As a result, several species were very quickly endangered and nearly wiped out.

Over half of the orchids shipped to Europe died in transit.

Prices skyrocketed, and orchid-growing became known as the pursuit of the very wealthy. As orchids became harder to find, prices only went higher, which only stoked the fires of those passionate, well-to-do orchid-growers.

It took World War I to put the brakes on the practice of rampant orchid-hunting. Although many orchids had been taken from their native habitats, and even though the War destroyed many greenhouses that held rare orchids, many hybrids did manage to survive. And some of the species that had been picked to near extinction in the tropics began to thrive again.

This looks like a Phalaenopsis, but I remember what this one was called: the Banana Panda orchid. I laughed out loud when I saw the sign. It's a type of Dendrobium.(Photo by the Apple Lady)

Nero Wolfe, a detective in Rex Stout novels, was very much into the orchid-growing. So was the bad guy in that movie with Mr. Tibbs. In the Heat of the Night.

The word orchid comes from a Greek word meaning testicle. This isn't because of anything to do with the flowers, but rather because the bulbs at the end of the roots of one particular orchid looked a lot like a pair of dangling testicles.

Another type of Dendrobium, I think. Apparently Dendrobia and Phalaenopsis are often confused.(Photo by the Apple Lady)

Today, orchids are among the most popular houseplant, more popular even than African violets, poinsettias, and chrysanthemums.

For a long time, Cattleya orchids were known as the corsage flower. This was because growers in the 1920s developed a method for raising large numbers of this particular genera, so they were widely available.

Funny thing, though. I don't think there was a single Cattleya in the exhibit I attended. Though I could very easily be wrong about that.

I'm going to stop talking for a while now and let you just look at a few pictures.

A white Phalaenopsis (moth orchid).(Photo by the Apple Lady)

I like how the petals of these (Cymbidium?) are translucent.(Photo by the Apple Lady)

All the variations in color and size and display were endlessly fascinating.(Photo by the Apple Lady)

This was another unusual one. I'm almost positive the nameplate for this one said Hawaiian Holly. It might be one of a group called Intergenerics. These are orchids that have been crossed and re-crossed so many times, unusual flower shapes result.(Photo by the Apple Lady)

Another Phalaenopsis. I think.

(Photo by the Apple Lady)

New orchid species are still being discovered, some 200 to 300 species per year. This doesn't mean new hybrids, but species growing in the wild.

It is believed that there are still an estimated 5,000 species that have not yet been identified.

There is an orchid called the Black Orchid, but the flower isn't actually black. It's more of a greenish-brown. It's also known as the Wild Banana Orchid (Cymbidium caniculatum).

There is no naturally-occurring black or blue orchid -- as far as we know. Maybe in another few years, someone will discover one.

I think this is a Phalaenopsis, too. I thought those striations were really cool. Wonderful plants, aren't they?(Photo by the Apple Lady)

How much is too much?
500 - 600 mg/day, or 4 or more cups of coffee/day

More than 4 of these per day, and you're probably doing damage to something in your body.(Photo from Wikimedia Commons)

By the way, a lot of manufacturers like to say their product has "only as much caffeine as one cup of coffee." But they never tell you any details about that cup of coffee. How many ounces is it? Is it instant coffee, or were the beans roasted and ground? Are those Arabica beans, or Robusta beans, or some other higher-caffeine-content bean? Or is it really espresso that they're choosing to call "coffee?" Saying something is equal to one cup of coffee is like saying, it's equal to whatever the heck I want it to be.

Where Caffeine Occurs Naturally

Caffeine occurs naturally in some plants. Scientists think that the caffeine's bitterness acts as a natural pesticide to some insects. But, as that study cited in the NYT discovered, caffeine is attractive to other kinds of insects, like bees, and bees apparently like it because they visit plants with caffeine more frequently than those without. So caffeine helps the plants in another way by aiding pollination.

Various sources say that anywhere from 60 to 100 species of plants contain caffeine. But nobody ever names all those species. They totally wimp out and just repeat those numbers. Even that NYT article said only "coffee and some citrus plants." I would love to know what those citrus plants are, but they didn't name names.

All the sources I consulted that do name some names only mention the plants we already know about, because these are the species that contain the highest amounts of caffeine.

I really wanted to talk about the lesser-known sources, but since nobody ever says what they are, we'll have to be content with the more commonly-known sources of caffeine. So here they are. Caffeine %s indicate how much caffeine is present in the plant.

The amount of caffeine in a coffee bean depends on which species, how it's been fertilized, how it's roasted, and all sorts of other variables. But it averages about 1.5%.(Photo from Kevin Burton's Blog)

Coffee. There are about 25 species of coffee plants. Which species is harvested and how the beans are roasted will affect how much caffeine is present in a cup of coffee. The most popular coffee bean is Arabica, and that has about 1.2% - 1.8% caffeine per bean.

Tea. The leaves of the tea plant are what we use to make tea, and it's the leaves that contain caffeine. Black or green, white or Oolong, decaf or regular. Unless it's herbal, in which
case it contains no actual tea leaves, it's got caffeine in it. Black tea leaves, which have the highest levels of caffeine are about 3% caffeine.

Kola. These are the nuts from the evergreen Cola trees which grow wild in Africa and are cultivated in South America. The nuts, which are dried and used in soft drinks, are about 2% - 3.5% caffeine.

Cacao. Caffeine is present in the seeds or beans of the cacao
plant (cocoa). The seeds grow inside a hard-shelled pod, which is about
the size of a small football and holds about 30-40 seeds. It's the
cocoa bean which is turned into chocolate. One cocoa bean is about
0.05% - 0/3% caffeine.

Other Naturally-Occurring Sources of Caffeine, or Stuff that's a Lot Like Caffeine

Guarana. Brazilian and Paraguayan plant that, like coffee, has seeds that contain caffeine. Actually, the compound is called guaranine, but scientists say it's so similar to caffeine, it might as well be considered the same thing. Guarana is starting to become
popular as a way to sneak caffeine into products without saying so
directly. One guarana bean is about the same size as a coffee bean,
but it contains a lot more caffeine -- anywhere from 5% to 10%.

Guarana plant. Those seeds give me the creeps. They look like eyeballs.(Photo from Herbal Biosolutions)

Yerba mate (pronounced mah-tay). This is a shrub that grows in South America, and it's often used to make tea. Like guarana, the stimulant that it contains (mateine) is very similar to caffeine, so similar that many people say it's the same thing. The leaves and the twigs contain mateine, and either or both may be used to make tea and other products. Yerba mate is being used in more food
products as another one of those sly sources of caffeine. Lots of places that sell it hail its antioxidant properties, but some studies show that people who drink a lot of it seem to be more likely to get cancer. Yerba mate is about 1% - 2% caffeine.

Guayusa (pronounced gway-yoo-sa). Another South American plant that grows along the Amazon. Ecuadorans have been drinking guayusa tea for a very long time. It's a relative of yerba mate. The leaves contain caffeine, but they also don't have any tannins so there's no bitterness. It's just starting to take hold in the US. Caffeine content in the leaves is about 3%.

Guayusa in dried form. One tea-drinker says, despite the promises of no tannins = no bitterness, unless you brew it exactly right, it turns out to be so bitter it's undrinkable.(Photo by Jessica Leibowitz)

Yaupon. This is a holly tree that grows in the southeastern part of the US, typically between the coastline and the outer edges of woods. It also grows in Argentina. The young leaves and twigs contain caffeine, and Argentinians drink yaupon tea. The leaves are 0.65% to 0.85% caffeine.

Yaupon looks like a cross between holly and coffee plants. Which is pretty much a good way to think of it. (Photo from Countryside Nursery)

A lot of people grow Yaupon as an ornamental shrub because it naturally grows in rounded, wind-sculpted shapes like this (the yaupon bushes are on the right.)(Photo from Will Cook's page about Yaupon)

Manufactured Products that Naturally Have Caffeine

Anything that's made with any of the above plants as ingredients will naturally contain caffeine. What you do with those caffeine-containing plant things, how you process the beans or the leaves, and how much you put into the food or drink will have a big effect on how much caffeine the manufactured product contains.

Coffee (beverages). Generally speaking, coffee products have the highest amount of caffeine. But different types of coffee beverages will have different amounts of caffeine. Espresso has the highest amount of caffeine: 63 mg/oz. Plain ol' black coffee has about 12 mg/oz. Coffee liqueur has 9 mg/oz.

Coffee (foods). Any foods such as ice cream, cookies, pies, cakes, etc. that contain coffee or are coffee-flavored will also contain caffeine. Again, the amounts vary widely depending on what that product is. Starbucks' coffee ice cream has 5 mg - 7.5 mg per oz.

Tea (beverages). Different kinds of tea leaves will have different amounts of caffeine. How long you steep the tea will slightly affect the caffeine content, too. Generally speaking, black tea has the most caffeine: 150 mg - 200 mg per 8 oz cup. White tea has the least: 33 mg - 55 mg per 8 oz cup.

Decaf coffee or tea, by the way, still contains some caffeine. Processors soak the beans or the leaves which allows some of the
caffeine to be taken out, but they can't remove all of the caffeine.
In the US, a 6 oz cup of decaf coffee still has about 3 - 6 mg of
caffeine. Think of "decaf" as meaning "less caffeine" as
opposed to "no caffeine."

Colas (beverages). Coke (2.5 - 3 mg/oz) and Pepsi (2.6 mg/oz - 3.25 mg/oz) come to mind first and foremost. They are made with kola nuts so naturally, they will contain caffeine. But some other soft drinks are not made with kola, but they have caffeine added to them. Mountain Dew (4.5 mg/oz), Sunkist's orange soda (3 mg/oz), and Barq's root beer (2 mg/oz) are a few.

Chocolate. Milk, dark, semisweet, baker's -- it's all got caffeine. Chocolate cookies, cakes, pies, candies, pudding, chocolate milk, ice cream, breakfast drinks, breakfast cereals, gum, yogurt -- if it's got chocolate in it, it's got caffeine. Not much, somewhere between 2 mg and 25 mg depending on how much chocolate is involved and whether it's dark (more caffeine) or milk (less) chocolate. The higher the cocoa solids, the more caffeine. Dark chocolate has more cocoa solids, so it has more caffeine. White chocolate has no cocoa solids, only the fat from the cocoa bean (some argue that therefore it shouldn't even be called chocolate). No cocoa solids, no caffeine.

Mmm, chocolate. If I had this photo as my desktop wallpaper, I would lick the screen. Like, every five minutes.(Photo from FreeTopWallpaper)

Guarana, yerba mate, guayusa, or yuapon (beverages). US manufacturers are just dipping their toes into these products, and they're trying out various combinations and mixtures. It appears as though the FDA hasn't had time to get to these things yet because people are selling teas and canned beverages and also "nutritional supplements" with wildly varying amounts of caffeine/caffeine-like stimulants in them. Some supplements have as much as 800 mg of caffeine. Egad. Read the labels, and don't buy all that "antioxidant properties, cures migraines, reduces inflammation" snake oil crap they're dishing to get you to buy their stuff.

Manufactured Products that Have Caffeine Added

Energy drinks. Where do you think that "energy" is coming from? The bizarre food coloring they've added to it? Naw, it's caffeine! Full Throttle energy drink has 12.5 mg/oz, or 200 mg total. Red Bull has 9.5 mg/oz, or 80 mg total. Redline Power Rush has a whopping 140 mg/oz, or 350 mg total. The FDA is looking very hard at these things because they're often marketed to teen-agers, who shouldn't have more than 100 mg of caffeine per day.

I have 2 thoughts on Red Bull: 1) the "wings" are caffeine; 2) they named themselves Bull.(Image from Red Bull Brand Blog)

Energy drinks combined with alcohol. These were pulled after the FDA said they were being marketed to young people, but here again, energy = caffeine. MillerCoors' Sparks contained 214 mg of caffeine per 16 oz can. The reason the beer & alcohol companies wanted to be able to sell these is that if you mix caffeine with your alcohol, you tend to feel less tired, and you drink more which means you buy more of their alcohol.

Diet pills. Caffeine makes you speedy, speediness reduces your
appetite and burns more food, you lose weight. Not in a healthy way,
mind you, but it does happen. Please don't take this as a
recommendation to take speed to lose weight. The FDA banned that sort of thing a long time ago. These diet pills may not containe speed, but they do have enough caffeine to be hair-raising. Zantrex-3 has the caffeine equivalent of 12 cups of coffee -- 3 times the maximum amount for an adult in a day.

Pain relievers. Excedrin is the most well-known among these. One Excedrin pill has 65 mg, which means the dose recommended by Excedrin has 130 mg, or close to your caffeine limit for the day.

Snacks with caffeine added. Manufacturers are adding caffeine to more and more foods because people get hooked on the caffeine buzz, so therefore people will get hooked on their latest HappyGoodTime SnackBuzz thing. Some products which now have caffeine added:

sunflower seeds

breakfast oatmeal

beef jerky

breath mints

gum

gummy bears

Jelly Bellies

lollipops (ThinkGeek makes a maple-bacon variety with caffeine)

popcorn

Cracker Jack

There's even a soap infused with caffeine.

Foods with caffeine added. Some real oddball items in this mix.(Photo from NPR)

There's even caffeinated soap. A bar of Shower Shock made by ThinkGeek sells for $6.99.(Photo from ThinkGeek)

Plants that Don't Have Caffeine but that Interact with It

Grapefruit -- one of those citrus plants with caffeine in the nectar -- slows the rate at which caffeine is metabolized. So if you eat grapefruit while you're having your morning coffee, your caffeine buzz will last longer.

A similar thing is true of vegetables in the Brassica family. These include Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and broccoli. They don't actually contain caffeine, but they can make your body absorb more of the caffeine you take in from other sources. So if you have coffee with your Brussels sprouts, the sprouts will give your coffee more of a kick.

About those mushrooms. I've checked nutritional data for all sorts of varieties of mushrooms -- oyster, Crimini, enoki, Maitake, portabella, shiitake, straw, and white -- in various forms -- raw, cooked, microwaved, stir-fried, canned, even in tomato sauce. Not one of them has any caffeine. Zero. Nada. Zilch. None.

That doctor must have been taking some of those other kinds of mushrooms, know what I mean?

Monday, March 4, 2013

At my book club meeting, I learned something pretty fascinating. We were getting together to start the year, so we weren't discussing any book in particular, just having dinner and conversation. One of our number is a fourth grade teacher and she told us about all the things she and her class learned when a comic book aficionado came to speak to her class.

The same guy who invented Wonder Woman also invented the lie detector, the comic book aficionado said. Makes sense, right? The Golden Lasso compels people to tell the truth.

Contrary to what you might think from that panel from his comic strip, this Wonder Woman-guy truly believed in the power of women. All that stuff about Wonder Woman being an Amazon--he really believed all that. He thought that someday, women would be the more powerful sex because in many ways they already were, so it was just a matter of time.

And, the comic book aficionado told the teachers after the kids had been dismissed, the creator of Wonder Woman and the lie detector was also in a polyamorous relationship. That is, he was married to a woman, but actually lived with two women, had children with both. The three of them lived together as a happy (though secret) family.

He began his academic career very interested in the science of deception. As an undergraduate, he came up with the concept of the lie detector.

Actually, it was his wife, Elizabeth, who gave him the idea. She told her husband that “When she got mad or excited, her blood pressure seemed to climb.” This eventually led Marston to develop an apparatus that tracked and recorded changes in blood pressure, with the implication that such changes would indicate when someone was lying.

He tried to get his lie detector used in court, but some people were skeptical that blood pressure alone would be enough to detect deception, so it wasn't really adopted by the law enforcement community.

In fact, the guy who is now widely credited with inventing the lie detector, John Augustus Larson, used some of Marson's ideas, but his machine tracked blood pressure, pulse, and respiration.

The Lie Detector as a Bondag-- er, Research Tool

That didn't stop Marston from claiming that he invented the lie detector. He published all sorts of articles -- mainly in popular magazines and newspapers -- saying he had invented the lie detector.

People bought what he was selling. His entry in the Encyclopedia of American Biography says he was the lie detector's inventor. People all over the internet still say he was its inventor.

But he had moved on from the law to psychology. He started using his lie detector in the service of his psychology "experiments."

I put "experiments" in quotation marks because more academically-minded psychologists might beg to differ with the quality of his research--especially by today's standards. But Marston believed they were scientific, controlled studies. He preferred to interpret his results in lay terms and publish them in popular magazines such as Look and Family Circle because he believed that psychology could set people free, and he wanted to reach as many people as possible.

One way he used his lie detector was to put it on a series of female volunteers and ask them questions about their love lives. If their blood pressure went up when asked about their neglectful husbands, he concluded that they were still in love with their spouses. Another pair, he declared, were really in love with each other though they were engaged to other people.

He did other studies where he went to sorority houses while they had "baby parties" in which the women tied each other up and disciplined or spanked each other. He had them put on his lie detector and gauged their reactions to disciplining each other or being disciplined. No, I am not making this up!

Another part of his research focused very extensively on trying to correlate women's hair color with their emotions, and he used his lie detector in service of that research. In another study, he showed movie scenes to female volunteers who wore his lie detector. The scenes he showed were of a boxer winning a fight (dominating), and of a girl who was dancing because she was a captive of some Tibetan priests (submission). He also showed them a love scene between Greta Garbo and John Gilbert.

Marston declared that his study proved that "brunettes enjoy the thrill of pursuit," while blondes "prefer the more passive enjoyment of being kissed."

Marston showing movies to brunettes and blondes attached to his lie detector(Photo from The Lie Detectors)

This particular study was done in front of a press corps. In spite of teasing him with questions like, "How do we know she's a real blonde?" the reporters ate it up. The New York Times published an article with the headline: "Blondes Lose Out in Film Love Test. Brunettes Far More Emotional. Psychologist Proves by Charts and Graphs."

This was in 1928, and Marston's research hit several popular hot-spots. Freudian psychology was taking off, as was research into sexuality, and so were the movies.

In fact, Universal Studios took Marston's research so seriously, they invited him to come work for them as a "consulting psychologist" to help them determine what movies would succeed with which audience members.

A firm believer in the popular press, Marston also used a Gillette razor ad to promote his lie detector.(Photo from The Lie Detectors)

Marston's Color Theories

It's not clear whether he actually helped the movie studio decide which movies were going to do better at the box office, but Marston did get to do all kinds of research into blondes, brunettes, and red-heads.

He was also hired as a consulting psychologist for Family Circle, and he published a lot of his hair-color research there, and in other women's magazines such as Cosmopolitan,Good Housekeeping, and the Ladies' Home Journal.

Katharine Hepburn, he said, "demonstrated some typical red-haired traits (aggressiveness and energy)" while "Blond Betty Grable's pride in showing her figure is a trait typical of fair-haired girls."

(Women's magazines still publish stuff like this, don't they? Or am I only remembering articles I used to see when I was in high school?)

The reason he was so interested in hair color (and eye color, too) was because he was trying to connect "primary colors" with "primary emotions." He wanted to know if you could predict how someone would react emotionally based on their hair and eye color.

Actually, he wanted his research to show what he already believed, which was that specific colors were associated with specific emotions.

His beliefs about the relationship between colors and emotions led him to make statements like this:

"Yellow . . . has always been the imperial colour of the Chinese. . . . [I]t is commonly recognized by those most conversant with Chinese philosophies, social customs, art, and religion, that the Chinese civilization has been built, primarily, upon an emotional response of submission."

Hogwash, right? Just keep that in mind as we proceed.

Marston's Theory of Dominance and Submission

Marston believed that the four primary, or most elemental, emotions were not love or anger or fear, but rather dominance, compliance, submission, and inducement.

He didn't like the theories of neurology and the neuron-synapse relationship that were emerging at the time. He thought the neurologists and the behaviorists were sweeping aside emotion completely and they were missing the boat.

The basis for human behavior, he said, was not the neuron by the psychon. I'm not really clear on how he defined psychon, only that he meant that emotions formed the basic element of human behavior. Emotions came about as the result of conflict between at least two impulses.

Every emotion, he believed, emerged after a struggle within us for -- you guessed it -- dominance.

So he saw everything in terms of a struggle of one thing versus another. The struggles that interested him the most were between the sexes and within the self.

He connected his four primary emotions with four primary colors. Dominance was blue and submission was yellow. Compliance, which he said was kind of a passive interest in what's around you, was green, while inducement, which was getting other people to submit further, was red.

This was why, he said, men generally prefer blue because men are generally more dominant. But a man who is cowardly would say yellow is his favorite color.

Yep. Really scientific.

That's also why he was so interested in the hair and eye color of women--he wanted to know if dark-haired or light-haired women were either dominant or submissive, and whether the color of their eyes figured into that equation, too.

Marston would have been determined to find out which of these women would be more dominant--based on the color of their hair.(Photo from Wilson Art Hair Gallery)

Submission is a Good Thing

It might sound like Marston was ho-hoing in triumph when he said that men were generally more dominant, but that's not the case at all. He said it was basically a mistake when women acted submissive because they were really only pretending and doing themselves a disservice, getting themselves all twisted up with repression and emotional conflicts.

He said that his experiments proved that "women prefer captivating men, and that men prefer to be captivated." He said that men don't want a woman to be submissive, but that a man prefers to "walk captive behind her chariot."

He also said that what looks like submission in women is really something else. "Women's erotic emotions which appear submission actually consist, for the most part of active inducement emotion." In other words, they're not really submitting to anything but rather secretly trying to get men to submit to them.

During World War II especially, he saw women gaining more power. In a 1942 interview, he said, "I tell you, my inquiring friend, there's great hope for this world.
Women will win! Give them a little more time and the added strength
they'll develop out of this war and they'll begin to control things in a
serious way."

Pretty much how Marston saw the future--women saving and ruling the world.(Photo from Toner Doll Duels)

He saw women in power as a good thing because men's primary definition of success was in terms of material gain, which was a very limited perspective. Women, however, defined success in terms of happiness, and not just their own but the happiness of the people around them. So a society in which women were dominant would be a society in which people were happier.

Learning submission would be a good thing, not just for men, but for everybody. To be truly free--and not just in terms of the relationship between the sexes, but in all things--one must learn "that all-important social trait, willing submission to other people."

Criminals, he said, were simply people who had not learned to submit to the state, which should operate like a loving authority. "The lawbreaker is a social rebel who cannot enjoy the experience of yielding his own will to someone else's, while the law-abiding citizen is a socially-minded individual who enjoys submitting to others on a majority of occasions."

Wonder Woman, the Golden Lasso of Truth, and the Bracelets of Submission

He wanted to help women realize they didn't need to be submissive, that
they could be dominant and possessed that capability innately. So he chose an even more popular-culture way than women's magazines to reach them: a comic strip.

When Marston (under the pen name Charles Moulton) created Wonder Woman in 1941, her entire world corresponded with his theories of dominance and submission.

Wonder Woman was an Amazon who lived on Paradise Island, a place where women ruled supreme in harmony. She wielded the Golden Lasso which, when wrapped around a criminal, rendered him immobile and submissive, compelled to tell the truth -- like a lie detector, but with more bondage.

She worked undercover for the US military intelligence, but her greatest enemy was the Duke of Deception.

Just off the shore of Paradise Island was Reform Island where prisoners were transformed by loving discipline. Each prisoner had to wear the Venus girdle which would make him want to become submissive to loving authority.

Wonder Woman was never completely secure in her dominant position, however. Aphrodite made the Amazons wear the Bracelets of Submission which served as reminders of what could happen if women submitted to the domination of men.

If a man chained the bracelets together, the woman would lose her special Amazonian strength and the man cold control her. If the bracelets were taken off, the woman would become "uncontrolled! . . . free to destroy like a man!"

So the place was built to operate between the competing struggles of male and female, dominance and submission.

Prisoners on Reform Island (later named Transformation Island) wearing their Venus girdles(Image from the Hooded Utilitarian)

Wonder Woman using her Golden Lasso (though you can't really see it) to make a criminal obey.(Image from the Hooded Utilitarian)

Lynda Carter sporting the Bracelets of Submission which, by the time the TV show came around, were nothing like the original though they did have the power to repel bullets. I wanted bracelets like that.(Photo from Screened)

Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down

You would think that Wonder Woman would therefore run around tying everybody up. But actually it was Wonder Woman who kept getting tied up -- and chained, and blindfolded, and handcuffed, and all sorts of otherwise restrained.

Wonder Woman bound and unbound, on page 10 from the first Wonder Woman #21, Jan-Feb 1947(Image from Comic Book Resources)

Marston didn't think it was that big a deal because the whole point was to show how she could escape such domination, so the reader always got a happy ending (ahem). But not everybody was familiar with Marston's theories about the socially-beneficial properties of bondage.

One reader, a soldier in the infantry, wrote to him saying,

"I am one of those odd, perhaps unfortunate men who derive an extreme erotic pleasure from the mere thought of a beautiful girl, chained or bound, or masked, or wearing extreme high-heels or high-laced boots--in fact, any sort of constriction or strain whatsoever. Your tales of Wonder Woman have fascinated me on [this] account. . . . Have you the same interest in bonds and fetters that I have?"

(A lot of people cite this letter as evidence of Marston's interests, but it was not written by Marston.)

I'm sure it was a very deliberate choice on Marston's part to make her brunette, so it's curious that Wonder Woman looks blonde here. (Image from Flavin's Corner)

The infantryman wasn't the only one who noticed all the bondage going on in Wonder Woman. A member of the editorial board of DC Comics complained about the strip's "sadistic bits showing women chained, tortured, etc."

Someone on the Child Study Association said "there was a considerable amount of chains and bonds. So much so that the bondage idea seemed to dominate the story." I wonder if he was aware of the pun there.

Marston was frustrated by this response. He didn't see the comic as being sadistic at all. He wrote to one of his detractors, saying, "Wonder Woman binds the victims in love chains--that is, she makes them submit to a loving superior, a beneficent mistress or master who in every case represents 'God,' or Goodness, or Aphrodite, Goddess of Love and Beauty."

He did also say in that 1942 Family Circle interview:

"Tell me anybody's preference in story strips
and I'll tell you his subconscious desires... Superman and the army of
male comics characters who resemble him satisfy the simple desire to be
stronger and more powerful than anybody else. Wonder Woman satisfies the
subconscious, elaborately disguised desire of males to be mastered by a
woman who loves them."

Even so, Marston capitulated (should we be surprised?) and agreed with his publisher to reduce "the use of chains by at least 50 to 75%."

In case you can't read it, the key dialogue here is "Bind them well, slaves. Ha ha! Revenge is so sweet." From the first Wonder Woman #21, Jan-Feb 1947

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

That 1942 interview in Family Circle? That was conducted by Olive Richard or Olive "Bobby" Byrne. Marston said she was his inspiration for Wonder Woman and that her heavy, silver bracelets were the source of the idea for the Bracelets of Submission. She was a former student and research assistant of his.

Olive moved in with Marston and his wife, Elizabeth -- the one who noticed her blood pressure went up when she got angry or excited -- in the 1920s.

It seems that Olive and Elizabeth got along fine. Olive bore two of Marston's sons, and Elizabeth also had two children by Marston. The two of them reared his children together, and Elizabeth even adopted Olive's sons. She named one of her daughters after Olive.

Elizabeth was no doormat. She had degrees in law and psychology, just like her husband, and she worked to put herself through school and continued to work while her children were growing up. Marston's children have said "It was a wonderful situation, a win-win deal for everyone."

Marston contracted polio and then skin cancer and died in 1947, after having written the Wonder Woman comic strip for six years.

After he died, Elizabeth and Olive simply continued living together. Elizabeth died in 1993, age 100.

Marston is seated in the center, that's Olive in the white blouse behind his shoulder, Elizabeth is in the right corner looking sideways at the camera, and the girl on Marston's knee is the daughter named after Olive. The woman with the square jaw in the left corner is someone named Marjorie Wilkes. Maybe she was a third woman in the Marston family? She was an assistant who worked on the comic.(Photo originally from Wonder Woman: The Complete History, sourced from Flavin's Corner)

Wonder Woman, post Marston

After his death, some psychologist wrote a treatise in which he claimed that Wonder Woman and her fellow Amazons were all a bunch of lesbians and they presented a "morbid ideal" for girls and threatened boys' masculinity. So the people who were still writing the comic changed a lot of things.

A lot of the bondage disappeared, the comic developed a much stronger interest in marriage and romance, and a lot of the feminism disappeared too.

By the late 1960s when she'd been watered down to the human Diana Prince with almost zero superpowers, and her popularity having plummeted, DC Comics enlisted the help of none other than Gloria Steinem in revamping her character.

When people say that Gloria Steinem put Wonder Woman on the cover of her first issue of Ms. magazine in 1972, they mean to suggest that this is evidence of Wonder Woman's staying power, not Steinem's self-promotion. But I think Marston would have been very pleased that it was, in fact, both.

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